Mike Huckabee

Speaking of cocooned leftists who are too deep in denial to accept the reality that there’s evil in the world worse than someone who doesn’t respect their preferred pronouns, the responses on Twitter to Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine have revealed them like a sudden spotlight. Nick Arama at Redstate.com rounded up some of the most jaw-droppingly insulated responses from people who are so spoiled and clueless that they see a potential genocide as an excuse to score “dunk” points about white privilege or unvaccinated people.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/24/crazy-meter-breaks-with-liberal-hot-takes-on-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-n527581

But when it comes to clueless leftists who are utterly impermeable to reality, bow down before the queen, Joy Behar of “The View.” Her biggest concern seems to be that World War III might put a crimp in her plans to vacation in Italy.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2022/02/24/joy-behar-has-a-pretty-selfish-take-on-what-the-people-in-ukraine-are-going-through-right-now-n2603773

If it's any consolation, I'm sure there are millions of Americans who will also be very disappointed if Joy Behar can't go on vacation.

Kenneth Allard

If you have never studied war, then the Russian aerial bombardments might have been shocking. So too the long lines of would-be refugees jamming every highway; even more, the horrid specter of blood-stained Ukrainian citizens desperately seeking to save their lives.

But having studied war for most of my adult life, particularly Soviet and Russian military science, the opening hours of the attack contained few surprises. Just as western analysts expected, the Russians opened with heavy missile bombardments against command-and-control targets. Shortly thereafter, armored forces moved smartly across border outposts, rapidly converging into strategic axes from three different directions. Their probable objective: a decapitation strike aimed at the capital of Kiev, where a Russian puppet would presumably be installed.

However, my dominant initial impressions were that the initial phases of the attack seemed short of the massive firepower - particularly artillery, the vaunted Red God of War - that has always commenced attacks since the Soviet era. As the progenitors of information warfare - explored as “radio-electronic combat” - one also would have expected Internet websites, GPS and all social media across Ukraine to have “gone dark” from the war’s first moments. Why did it not?

Remembering my days at NBC News, I watched as my latter-day successors sketched out the advances of Russian combat formations, some of which seemed more tentative than an all-out blitzkrieg. Occasionally, someone would note that Ukraine is one of the largest countries in Europe. Actually, it’s even larger than Texas, which is where I live. Has anyone remembered to check the scale of those maps, remembering how quickly terrain can challenge even the most mobile ground forces? Remember above all: countries may be easy to invade but much tougher to conquer, particularly against insurgents who are well-armed and intent on selling their lives dearly. Bottom Line: We haven’t yet seen Russian “shock and awe” so stay tuned!

That said: My dominant Day One impression was that Joe Biden is horribly miscast as a wartime president. In his televised remarks from the East Room on Thursday, he mostly conveyed the impression that he was channeling Neville Chamberlain, holding out the forlorn hope that economic sanctions might achieve “peace in our time.” For the record, folks, there are only two kinds of sanctions: the ones that don’t work at all; and the ones that do but cause wars. So which ones are you announcing, Mr. President, and why on earth do you think Vladimir Putin regards you and the people around you with anything less than contempt? My friend Fred Fleitz, formerly Chief of Staff for the National Security Council, said yesterday that Biden needs to sack most of his national security team “because they are second stringers.” Former Speaker Newt Gingrich was one of several Fox analysts to recommend that Biden reverse his support of climate change and use American energy capabilities to drive Russian oil companies out of business.

I smiled when the Speaker said that. While teaching at West Point, I invited a visiting Texas oilman to tell my cadets something I hope they still remember. Raring back in his cowboy boots, the oilman pulled out his wad of greenbacks, brandishing a hundred-dollar bill. “You boys need to remember that the ultimate form of American power is NOT you and your M-16. It’s this thing right here!” Amen!

NOTE: Colonel Allard is the author of Command, Control and the Common Defense, winner of the 1991 National Security Book Award. After leaving active duty, he became an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News

Mike Huckabee

As you surely know by now, last night, Vladimir Putin made good on his threat to invade Ukraine. There’s no hair-splitting about it, it’s a full-on military invasion, including tanks and troops crossing the border and the shelling of the capital city of Kyiv, the largest military attack in Europe since World War II.

Before I get into the details, the most important thing I can do is ask you to join me in praying for the safety of the Ukrainian people, for the return of peace, and although this may sound like too much of a miracle to ask, for Vladimir Putin to realize the evil of his actions and change his heart and mind.

I’m not going to attempt to update you on what's happening, because events are moving too fast. For the latest, here’s a link to a Fox News feed of continually-updated bulletins:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-us-allies-sanctions

As of this writing (early Thursday morning), there are reports of dozens of people dead. The leader of a Ukrainian emergency response organization said that it appeared Russia was targeting military locations and not civilians, although there is a crush of panicking civilians trying to evacuate. He said so far, Putin was doing exactly what he said he would do. His best case scenario was that he would just attack the military, install a Russian puppet government and pull back without targeting civilians.

Putin threatened that any countries that interfered in his invasion of Ukraine would face “the greatest consequences in history,” not making clear whether he meant cyber warfare, nuclear attack or something else. He also claimed he was reversing the “Nazification” of Ukraine, a bizarre claim considering Ukraine has a Jewish President and a large Jewish population. I wonder where he could have gotten the idea that an autocratic communist could justify crushing his political opponents simply by branding them as “Nazis” first.

Some who watched his TV appearance said he didn’t seem like the same Putin who’s smoothly played the media and attended summit meetings in recent years. No, he seemed like what he has always been: a former KGB thug and Stalin admirer who wants to reassemble the Soviet Union police state. That shouldn’t be a surprise, but too few people these days know real history. Is it only a coincidence that Putin waited to strike until February 23rd, the anniversary of the first mass protests of 1917 that kicked off Russia’s communist revolution?

Just as Russian media misleads the Russian people into thinking that NATO is a threat to Russian sovereignty (it’s actually a purely defensive force against Russian aggression; believe me, nobody wants to take over Russia, certainly not in February), many young people in America have been misled by their teachers into thinking that communism is just “people sharing” and the real evil in the world is the United States.

Well, kids, those Russian tanks and missiles are your rude awakening to reality. You finally get to see the real face of communism that the rest of us grew up with. It’s a tough way to learn what “violence” and “imperialism” really are, and it's not someone building a Chick-Fil-A on your campus.

Putin will do whatever he wants without regard for any threats from the US or NATO. He’s seen weakness, he’s waited for the perfect moment to strike, and after seeing us leave Afghanistan, he’s decided that this is it. And he’s not the only one. Yesterday, China defended Ukraine as an independent nation only so they could warn the world not to confuse Taiwan with one of those because it’s part of China. They went on to make a not-so-veiled threat that implies Beijing has also been emboldened by our weak dealings with Afghanistan and is watching closely to see what Biden does about Ukraine.

At this moment, we’re still waiting to hear what Biden plans to do, although last night, he did reimpose the sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 oil pipeline that he inexplicably lifted less than a year ago.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-sanctions-nord-stream-2-pipeline-russia-germany

Maybe that will help bring down the estimated extra $1 billion a day that’s been flowing into Putin’s war chest thanks to high oil and gas prices brought about by targeting America’s fossil fuel industry.

The White House warned that due to the Ukraine crisis and coming sanctions, Americans might be seeing even higher prices at the gas pumps. Gosh, if only there were some way that America could produce its own oil and gas so we wouldn’t be reliant on imports from places like Russia.

There’s a lot more that I could say, but there’s an old tradition in America that’s been ripped up in recent years, but I think it deserves preservation: when America is facing a serious crisis abroad, Americans shouldn’t attack their own President. I think we all know why we, and the world, are in this situation now, so I don’t have to belabor it.

Let’s just say for now that I, and I hope all Americans, stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine and behind all those who stand up against this barbaric action by Vladimir Putin. And please, pray for Ukraine.

Mike Huckabee

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might be dominating the news, but whenever one story is taking all the attention, it’s important to ask oneself what other events might be going on behind the scenes. In fact, Hillary Clinton is surely asking herself that very question, as she can’t count on leaks from the special counsel’s office to tell her. Like the rest of us, she has to glean it from the deliberately detailed motions he files.

Recall that Durham was criticized by lawyers for Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann for putting so much detail in his “speaking indictment” against their client and the later motion about conflicts of interest. They created some unintentional humor by saying their client hadn’t lied to the FBI, but even if he did (!), the lie was immaterial so the charge should be dropped. They also asked that Durham’s entire section on “Factual Background” be struck from the record. (One wonders if that might be because Sussmann attorney Latham & Watkins LLP, in a huge conflict of interest, also represents some of the other people mentioned.) But Durham easily defended his inclusion of this section as material to the case.

The question remains, though: why would Durham put so much detail into his court documents at this time, weaving threads with people who haven’t yet been indicted? Former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI Kevin Brock, in an opinion piece for The Hill, speculates that after a year-and-a-half and just a few indictments against seemingly peripheral players, Durham might be seen as unproductive, and that this perception might give Attorney General Merrick Garland enough cover to shut down his investigation, as we all know he’s longing to do.

Brock, in a fine example of understatement, writes, “The Biden DOJ is not friendly to the goals of Mr. Durham.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/595235-john-durham-sent-a-message-to-the-attorney-general-and-the?rl=1

“If Durham were to be terminated,” Brock says, “the American people might not even push back much since no one had a clue whether his investigation was bearing meaningful fruit.” But now, the dots he’s connected to the Clinton campaign create quite a stunning picture. Besides providing us with some hope that there might actually be accountability in Washington DC, he also made it much harder for the President or the AG to dump him. Brock offers a brief history lesson on Nixon’s firing of Watergate independent prosecutor Archibald Cox, first accepting the resignations of both the attorney general and deputy attorney general for refusing to fire Cox. At the request of the White House, FBI agents came and sealed off Cox’s office, and those of the AG and deputy AG as well.

(In an interesting bit of trivia, by law the solicitor general acts as attorney general when the AG and deputy AG are absent, so Nixon told HIM to carry out the firing of Cox, and he did. That man was Robert Bork, who was later nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan. Bork’s approval process was the first really vicious one –- setting the tone for future disgraceful hearings such as Clarence Thomas’s and Brett Kavanaugh’s –- with Sen. Ted Kennedy twisting Bork’s opinions to say that “Robert Bork’s America” would be one of “back-alley abortions” and “segregated lunch counters.” Bork was rejected by the Senate, leading to the coining of the word “borked.” One of the senators voting against his confirmation was...yes, Sen. Joe Biden.)

I digress. Anyway, that series of firings, nicknamed the “Saturday Night Massacre,” did not end well for Nixon. Here’s the story as told by the Washington Post in 1973, back when it was a real news organization.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/102173-2.htm

Still, that situation was different from today’s, as Nixon’s AG, Elliot Richardson, and his deputy AG, William Ruckelshaus, were refusing to follow Nixon’s order to fire Cox. Biden’s AG, Merrick Garland, and his deputy AG, Lisa Monaco, are both such political hacks that either of them would fire Durham in a New York minute and not even wait for Biden’s order, thus leaving Biden in the clear. So it’s been important while we wait for the investigation to conclude that they not find any justification to fire him. That seems to be why we’re finally starting to hear compelling hints about the progress he’s made.

And now we know he’s put together the outlines of, in Brock’s words (which suit me fine), “a corrupt conspiracy by operatives linked to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The exposed conspiracy allegedly made a contrived, fraudulent and shocking attempt to entice the FBI and CIA to use their powers against the rival Trump campaign and presidency.” It should be noted that this wasn’t just an “attempt,” as Durham will show the FBI and CIA actually were involved. (The CIA is "Agency - 2.")

When Durham included specifics about “Tech Executive – 1,” identified as Rodney Joffe of Neustar, he signaled that at least one person under investigation had “flipped” and given up some information. That’s because much of the “Factual Background” had to come to him either from Joffe or from someone he approached for help in putting together the fake Alfa Bank story.

Right now, Democrats are trying to say that Joffe wasn’t “really spying” because he had an actual contract –- as Lucy said to Charlie Brown, “a signed document” –- to maintain the servers he lifted information from. Joffe gave proprietary government data to a civilian third party. It’s STILL SPYING. Getting the contract is just the way in.

Brock makes the case that Durham must be allowed to continue his work, and says “there will be more squirming to come in powerful circles.”

Speaking of squirming, we said months ago that “journalists” at The New York Times and the Washington Post should have to give back the Pulitzer Prize they received for their coverage of the Russia Hoax. Now the editorial board at the New York Post concurs, in an epic commentary. The “collusion” was revealed as a hoax, they said, “Yet the damage had been done. The liberal media had ‘destabilized U.S. democracy’ more than Russia ever could, by feeding left-leaning Americans a constant, false narrative that their President was a sleeper agent.”

https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/the-absurd-russiagate-pulitzer-of-the-ny-times-and-washington-post/

Something else to enjoy in light of the recent revelations about the Clinton campaign: from Byron York, here’s “A Guide to Clinton Dirty Tricks.” York, with his chronological approach, ties it all together well.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-a-guide-to-clinton-dirty-tricks

Finally, Margot Cleveland takes what Durham has told us so far that ties in Hillary and says there is more coming. “’Russia Russia Russia’ was a Hillary Clinton enterprise,” she says. We know this because the special counsel has subpoenaed the DNC, the Clinton campaign (same thing), Perkins Coie and, apparently, Fusion GPS. They’ve obtained tens of thousands of relevant documents and prepared reports on over 100 interviews, including one with “a former employee of the Clinton Campaign.”

As Cleveland points out, the media will continue trying to bury whatever comes out of this investigation. Durham knows, of course, the only “win” he (and we) will have is indictments that stick. These people need to pay for their deception and for what they put our country through.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/21/4-special-counsel-revelations-tying-spygate-to-hillary-clintons-campaign/

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Those who insist on forcing children to wear masks indefinitely while flouting their own rules are not all big name politicians and celebrities. Sure, there are plenty of those, and their excuses are as feeble as they are hypocritical.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2022/02/19/is-la-mayor-eric-garcetti-for-real-with-this-response-on-mask-hypocrisy-n2603535

Even their pet “fact-checkers” come off as clowns when they try to “ackshully…” their staggeringly obvious hypocrisy and privilege away.

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/02/19/amazing-politifact-twists-into-a-pretzel-to-debunk-comparisons-of-unmasked-super-bowl-fans-to-kids-in-school/

But mask hypocrisy is hardly confined to A-listers. At a Montgomery County, Virginia, school board meeting, a mom accused a mask zealot board member of hypocrisy, proving it with a photo lifted from Facebook of the member maskless in a crowd.

The board member, like all petty tyrants from Justin Trudeau on down who claim they cherish “democracy” but hate it when the people actually speak up to them, accused the mom of libeling and disparaging (apparently, those are now synonyms for “describing”) a member of the school board, claimed she wasn’t focusing on “issues pertinent to children,” and ordered her to sit down. When she refused, he told a police officer to escort her from the building.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/social-media-erupts-after-school-board-member-storms-out-of-meeting-confronted-by-maskless-photo

But then, another school board member intervened, saying, "She should be allowed to say her piece. I've had to listen to people come and criticize me." At that, the first member stormed out of the room in a huff. Funny, I’m old enough to remember when liberals loved “speaking truth to power.” But then, that was before they came into power.

From the tsunami of support that mom is receiving locally and online, I bet she could easily replace that arrogant school board member in the next election, if she wants the job.

Mike Huckabee

If Canada is going to allow Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to turn a once-free nation into an autocratic police state, then Parliament will have to vote today to allow it. Trudeau wants to make many of his “emergency” powers permanent.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/02/20/democracy-dies-in-canada-trudeau-government-to-make-some-of-their-new-authoritarian-measures-permanent-n1560716

But the emergency powers act he invoked to crush the truckers’ freedom protesters can only hold for seven days unless Parliament votes to extend it, and may the eternal light of shame shine on any member who does.

There have been so many developments and so many outrages just in the past couple of days that I can’t list them all. Here are just a few: The arrests of protesters in Ottawa have continued, although some say they weren’t taken into custody, just driven out of town and released, and many of them returned. This is possibly because they weren’t actually breaking any laws so there wasn’t anything they could be charged with if they were taken to a police station.

It turns out that the elderly lady in a mobility scooter who was trampled by a police horse was an Indigenous People’s leader of full Mohawk heritage. Or as Trudeau would call her, “a white supremacist.”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/20/heres-more-on-the-ottawa-freedom-convoy-woman-run-over-by-police-with-their-horses-n525440

The government crackdown on rights has gone so far overboard that people are having their bank accounts frozen just because they made donations to the truckers weeks ago before Trudeau even invoked his emergency, creating a new category of retroactive thought crimes.

https://instapundit.com/504817/

Coffee is also apparently insurrectionist. A café owner was reportedly threatened with arrest for serving coffee to truckers. And here’s video of police hitting a woman’s camera and threatening her for the crime of being from Alberta and trying to walk somewhere to buy coffee.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/20/watch-going-for-coffee-is-now-a-crime-in-ottawa-police-may-attack-and-threaten-you-n525362

This protest was never really about vaccine mandates (it’s reported that 90% of the truckers are already vaccinated.) It was certainly not about racism, as most of the truckers are minorities. It was about the heavy hand of the government crushing the people’s rights. If that wasn’t clear to begin with, it certainly should be now.

Instapundit has been doing a good job of rounding up all the latest stories and comments on this dark time in Canada’s history. You can find a lot more here:

https://instapundit.com/504808/

https://instapundit.com/504761/

And David Solway at PJ Media has a stark warning for Canadians titled “Requiem For a Nation.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/19/requiem-for-a-nation-n1560630

I hope Canadians will read it because as Solway writes, it’s up to them whether events of the next few days miraculously save their Charter of Rights and Freedoms from being “nothing but an irrelevant scrap of parchment,” or whether “Canada has been transformed into a federal caricature” whose “leaders are unaccountable and depraved and the majority of the population, to quote Aristotle, 'are not capable of sufficient rational appreciation of political ends.'”

Finally, here’s a warning for Americans who think they can ignore what’s happening to our neighbor to the north: William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection says that Trudeau is following the same playbook that the left is following here to cement their own tyrannical rule: declare anyone who disagrees with them to be a lower class of “others” who hold “unacceptable views,” and have government collude with big tech, the financial industry and other systems that everyone relies on to shut their opponents out of the means of communication and the basic necessities of life.

It’s working in China, with their surveillance state and “social credit" system. If China’s too far away for Americans to see the dangers and stand up to stop it, then is Ottawa close enough?

Mike Huckabee

Those of us old enough to recall the Reagan era (pardon me while I take a moment to remember it…Oh, well, back to 2022) will recall the famous “misery index.” Invented by economist Arthur Okun, Reagan used it to convince Americans to choose him over Jimmy Carter. It was a combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, the two together serving as a gauge of how miserable people felt with prices rising even while work was hard to find.

Well, last month under Biden, the misery index reached 11.5%, the highest in a decade, even higher than in the early days of the pandemic.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/biden-misery-index-rise-americans-pessimistic-about-countrys-future

But I bet I know what you’re thinking: 11.5% seems awfully low, considering the widespread misery this Administration has created. Well, there are a few reasons for that. One is that it doesn’t include the many other ways the Democrats are spreading misery, like with open borders, skyrocketing crime rates and their never-ending assaults on personal freedom and individual rights. Another is that the unemployment rate is only 4%. But it seems much higher (and honestly is) because that stat only includes people who are actively looking for work, and not those who are living off government largesse. Also, unemployment claims “unexpectedly” jumped last week:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/jobless-claims-coronavirus-pandemic-feb-12-2022

The third factor is that the bigger portion of the misery index, inflation, might be a high 7.5% (with no ceiling in sight), but that’s still a really lowball estimate. Boston columnist and radio host Howie Carr did a deep dive into how inflation is really affecting everyday Americans.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/02/16/howie-carr-biden-inflation-a-pain-at-the-pump-grocery-store/

It’s not just a “high-class problem,” as Biden’s smug chief of staff dismissively described it. Carr quotes many listeners who shared their horror stories about both inflation and the supply chain shortages, from having to drive from store to store searching for cat food as if on a treasure hunt, to a man who put $25 worth of gas in his truck and it didn’t even cut off the “low fuel” light.

Carr also points out that the government inflation figure is kept artificially low by not including two of our biggest necessities: food and fuel. He consulted a website called shadowstats.com that computes inflation using the more honest pre-1980 formula. Under that, current inflation is actually 15.63%, the highest since 1947. That was so long ago that Joe Biden was only five years old.

Even accepting the artificially-low 4% unemployment rate, that would put the current misery index at nearly 20%. Yes, that feels a lot more accurate to me. Incidentally, the misery index hit a high under Jimmy Carter of 21.9%, but if anyone can break that record, I have faith that Biden can.

Mike Huckabee

Michael Sussmann’s attorneys at Latham & Watkins –- the firm that has also represented the Hillary campaign, Hillary for America, The Clinton Foundation, Marc Elias, the law firm Perkins Coie, and seemingly just about everybody else being looked at by Durham –- have filed two motions this week, one on Monday requesting that Durham’s “Factual Background” on the case be stricken from his motion filed last Friday, and the other yesterday for a dismissal of the charge against Sussmann. In essence, they’re saying, “Our client did NOT LIE! And even if he did, his lie wasn’t material to the overall case, so it’s not actually criminal.” Pretty amusing, really.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/17/breaking-sussmann-attorneys-make-big-move-in-durham-case-n523620

RedState.com says “a closer look at the request shows it to be much more of a desperate heave into the end zone than a play expected to succeed.”

Sussmann’s attorneys call the case “extraordinary prosecutorial overreach” and even say the indictment “fails to state an offense.” They write, “It has long been a crime to make a false statement to the government. But the law criminalizes only false statements that are material --- false statements that matter because they can actually affect a specific decision of the government.” False statements about “ancillary matters” are “immaterial and cannot give rise to criminal liability.”

Amazingly, they’re telling Durham that Sussmann was visiting the FBI and the CIA just to give “tips” (actually the fake Alfa Bank story) and that the fact he was working for --- and billing --- the Clinton campaign was immaterial. “Allowing this case to go forward would criminalize ordinary conduct,” the motion says, “raise First Amendment concerns, dissuade honest citizens from coming forward with tips, and chill the advocacy of lawyers who interact with the government.” Oh, goodness, surely the special counsel wouldn’t want to criminalize ordinary conduct, like peddling a fake story to federal investigators and lying to them about why!

It sure looks like a last-ditch effort to us. This is what you use when you don’t have anything else.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/17/michael-sussmanns-motion-to-dismiss-is-a-flaming-pile-of-garbage-n523722

As for trying to get the case dismissed, RedState points out that it’s the defense’s job to try to do that. They predictably came up with a way, but one that’s not compelling. “The existence of this motion does not in any way serve as evidence that Durham’s case against Sussmann is specious,” ‘Bonchie’ says. “In fact, a closer look at the filing shows it to be incredibly weak.”

How could Sussmann’s tip about Alfa Bank be “ancillary” to the FBI’s decision to investigate Trump, Russia and Alfa Bank? By presenting himself as a tipster, not a Clinton campaign lawyer –- which involved lying in answer to a direct question –- he made himself and his allegations seem more credible. And that would be, or at least should be, extremely material to the FBI’s decision on whether to open an investigation.

As RedState reminds us, Michael Flynn’s so-called “lie” to the FBI “did not appear to be material about much of anything,” and George Papadopoulos’s simple mix-up of dates didn’t, either, yet both of them were prosecuted. Those examples set the bar very low for a statement being “material.”

Sussmann’s attorneys also argued that Durham had used false and irrelevant allegations “plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” Apparently, Durham was expecting these arguments to be made.

RedState cautioned that left-leaning “legal analysts” should wait until Durham has had a chance to respond before rushing to praise the defense’s motion to dismiss.

At the time of this writing, we’re still waiting on that response, but news broke Thursday evening about his no-nonsense response to the motion Sussmann’s attorneys filed earlier, the one to strike Durham’s “Factual Background” on the case.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-no-basis-strike-factual-background-filing-denies-intent-politicize-sussmann-case

“This court should deny the defendant’s motion,” Durham said. “If third parties or the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the government’s motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the government’s inclusion of this information...Moreover, any potential prejudice or jury taint arising from such media attention can effectively and appropriately be addressed through the voir dire process during jury selection.”

We would add that this is the job of attorneys for both sides during jury selection. There will be plenty of media attention knocking the Durham investigation --- arguably much more than we’ll see that's positive --- so doesn’t that “taint” the jury pool as well?

Sussmann’s motion on Monday said that Durham’s allegations in the “Background Information” section of his filing last Friday, such as Rodney Joffe’s use of a “special arrangement” to obtain data from otherwise highly secure email servers for the President’s office, should be stricken. But Durham, in his response on Thursday, confidently defended his use of those details:

“The government included two paragraphs of limited additional factual detail in its motion for valid and straightforward reasons,” he wrote. “First, those paragraphs reflect conduct that is intertwined with, and part of, events that are central to proving the defendant’s alleged criminal conduct. Second, government included these paragraphs to apprise the court of the factual basis for one of the potential conflicts described in the government’s motion, namely that a member of the defense team was working for the Executive Office of the President of the United States during relevant events that involved the EOP [Executive Office of the President].”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/durham-insists-snooping-evidence-valid-for-case-and-media-misinterpretations-dont-undermine-facts

Even with the explanation from Durham, Margot Cleveland wondered aloud on Thursday why he was being so forthcoming about certain facts in the case. “Why is Durham telling us this?” she asked. She said that if he had a nefarious reason, he would have done as the Mueller team did and leak selectively to friendly outlets. But Durham hasn’t been leaking at all.

She postulated that by putting some details of what he has in these motions, he “might prompt cooperation in a way that plea negotiations can’t.” Or perhaps he’s trying to make somebody nervous and incriminate himself. Or he hopes that by showing some of his cards, he’s making it “politically impossible” for the Biden administration to shut him down.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/16/explosive-allegations-protect-durham-probe-being-s/

Or he’s trying to rattle the government by showing he’s a step ahead, as with IG Horowitz’ office after it failed to turn over cell phone evidence. Or he’s trying to keep “we the people” informed. Or it’s all of the above.

The DC Circuit Court generally looks with disfavor on motions to strike, she said, so it doesn’t look good for Sussmann’s defense on that. On the other hand, “How the court will rule is anyone’s guess at this point, but we will likely see a counter from Special Counsel Durham’s office first –- and maybe a few more hints on what is to come as well.”

Whenever we find ourselves generally on the same track with Margot Cleveland, we know we as non-lawyers are doing a pretty good job of sorting all this out. Read her analysis, and your legal IQ will go up about 50 points.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/17/special-counsel-john-durham-is-opening-up-about-his-spygate-investigation-but-why/

And something fall-down-funny she noticed: Sussmann’s lawyers actually cite Peter Strzok!

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/17/one-part-of-michael-sussmanns-motion-to-dismiss-will-have-you-laughing-out-loud-n523955

Mike Huckabee

There are a number of investigations being launched into what Black Lives Matter has been doing with the approximately $90 million that was showered on them in the past couple of years by terrified white liberals and the corporations they run. Now, we know what they’re doing with $100,000 of it. They used it to pay the (shockingly low) bail of BLM activist Quintez Brown, who is charged with attempted murder for allegedly firing a shot at a Jewish Louisville mayoral candidate who’s running against a black candidate.

Here's some background on the shooting and the suspect. 

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/blm-supporting-gun-control-activist-arrested-for-attempted-murder-of-louisville-mayoral-candidate/

As Redstate.com points out, the Washington Post mustered no outrage for BLM using donor funds to bail out an alleged would-be murderer, but they have time to call up and dox people from a hacked list of GiveSendGo donors and harass them about donating to support the Canadian truckers’ peaceful freedom protest. At this point, I can’t imagine using WaPo for anything other than bird cage liner. If your birds will deign to poop on it. 

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/16/black-lives-matter-further-debases-itself-in-kentucky-n523283

That piece also points out that the investigations of BLM’s finances are all on the state level. The Biden “Justice” Department can’t seem to find a thing worth looking into, just as they ignore Antifa and police who kill Trump supporters. Keep all of this in mind when you vote in November.

Mike Huckabee

From Substack reader C. M. Cobb:

Looks like the White House servers were not hacked but rather Joffe was given access. By whom? I think that person plus the receiver of the info should be worried.

This just happens to be what we were planning on addressing next --- the “sensitive arrangement” that enabled Rodney Joffe, former Senior Vice President of Neustar, to infiltrate the White House computer servers.

(Note: speaking of Neustar, it was acquired in December, 2021, by TransUnion for $3.1 billion. No small potatoes.)

Take a look at the wording of Durham’s report: Joffe “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP [Executive Office of the President] as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS [domain name system] resolution services to the EOP.” They “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about President Trump.”

This is what spies do. To do it, they either have to have inside help or else successfully compromise someone, likely through some combination of blackmail and/or threats. In other words, the “sensitive arrangement” might have been a matter of friendly cooperation within an anti-Trump cabal, or possibly was “an offer you can’t refuse.” How Joffe managed to achieve this very underhanded “sensitive arrangement” is no doubt under investigation.

The CIA was also involved. As Jerry Dunleavy reported this weekend for the Washington Examiner, “Durham said Friday that Sussmann, at a meeting in February, 2017, [EDITORIAL NOTE: AFTER TRUMP WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE] ‘provided an updated set of allegations –- including the Russian Bank – 1 data and additional allegations relating to Trump’ to another U.S. government agency dubbed ‘Agency – 2,’ which is reportedly the CIA.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/durham-says-democrat-allied-tech-executive-spied-on-trumps-white-house-office

During his CIA meeting, Sussmann allegedly “provided data which he claimed reflected purportedly suspicious DNS lookups by these entities of internet protocol addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider,” claiming that this showed “Trump and/or his associates” were using “rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” Durham said this claim was “highly misleading or outright false” and explained why.

According to Durham, the so-called “sensitive arrangement” with Joffe started in July of 2016. (Crossfire Hurricane was opened at the end of July.) Kash Patel, lead investigator for Devin Nunes’ House Intelligence Committee, did use the word “hack” to describe what was done: “Per the pleading, the government will also show that Joffe, af the direction of Sussmann/Elias and the Clinton campaign, exploited proprietary data, to hack Trump Tower and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), which Sussmann later relayed to U.S. agencies in the hopes of having them launch investigations of President Trump.”

As Tucker Carlson reported Monday, Joffe, a pro-Hillary activist from South Africa who assembled a team of cyber researchers from Georgia Tech, said in emails that he wanted Hillary to win because she “had promised him a job as a top cybersecurity officer in the U.S. government.” Durham said Joffe “tasked those researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia.”

Here’s a link to Tucker's monologue, worthwhile especially for the clip between Trump and Hillary during their 2016 debate. In a way that seems ridiculous in light of current revelations, she plays it to the hilt: “It’s pretty clear...that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants you to do, and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race.”

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6297536905001#sp=show-clips

Brother. Let’s see, who was it who “encouraged espionage”? Hint: not Trump. And it’s hard to imagine this REAL espionage wasn’t done without the knowledge and direction of Hillary Clinton. Here she was talking about the so-called espionage against the DNC, the “hacking” of their servers, but we know even that was made up. There’s still no evidence Russia did that.

As politicized as the intel community is, two recent appointees as Director of National Intelligence were definitely not part of the swamp: Ric Grenell and John Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe says there's “enough evidence” to bring charges against “quite a few” people associated with the origin of the bogus Trump-Russia investigation. Ratcliffe himself even informed Durham that Clinton’s lawyers might have hacked Trump’s servers to fabricate a story that distracted from her own email scandal. And Obama and Biden both knew, Ratcliffe told FOX NEWS’ Bill Hemmer on Monday, because then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed them on it.

https://republicbrief.com/ex-director-of-national-intelligence-says-theres-enough-evidence-to-indict-multiple-people-in-trump-russia-probe/

An update from FOX NEWS is consistent, saying more people are cooperating and going before Durham’s grand jury than has previously been reported.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-probe-accelerated-more-people-cooperating-coming-before-grand-jury

Lee Smith, author of THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT, also appeared on Tucker’s show, saying, “...The idea that the Oval Office and other important offices in the White House were under surveillance by political operatives is extraordinary. It’s shocking --- and I’m talking to people who were investigating this on the Hill for several years, and they’re shocked.” We’re finally starting to understand the scope and depravity of this operation, he said, and “it’s terrible for the country.”

So, what was the impetus for Durham’s filing last Friday? He was asking the presiding judge to inquire into potential conflicts of interest arising from Sussmann’s representation by the law firm Latham & Watkins, as these could be relevant at trial. Latham has previously represented both Sussmann and Perkins Coie over issues Durham said might become relevant, and also “maintained professional and/or personal relationships with individuals who could be witnesses in these proceedings.” (Sussmann has reportedly waived any concern.) More on this law firm to come.

Finally, Margot Cleveland at The Federalist has perhaps the definitive breakdown –- for now –- of what Durham might have in store for those guilty of a spying and frame-up operation against Trump. Again, John Ratcliffe and Ric Grenell, both former Directors of National Intelligence, knew what the Democrats were up to and apparently helped point Durham in the right direction. Grenell tweeted that “some Democrats knew” about the plan for Joffe to monitor Trump’s White House internet and “let it go.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/14/special-counsel-democrats-framed-and-spied-on-trump-while-he-was-president/

Ratcliffe announced in October, after Sussmann was indicted, that he’d provided Durham with almost 1,000 pages of materials. He said then that Sussmann’s indictment was “the tip of the iceberg.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-ratcliffe-intelligence-documents-john-durham-charges

Other than the New York Post and some conservative sites (like this one!), hardly anyone is covering what Rep. Elise Stefanik calls “the biggest criminal political corruption story of our lifetime.” (We’d love to be flies on the wall during their editorial meetings!) Asked about this, K. T. McFarland said that “it’s because all the other media was in on the con...They don’t want to have to be called before a grand jury and have to say where they got the fake story and why they continue to peddle it.”

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kyle-drennen/2022/02/14/nets-silent-clinton-spying-trump-cover-skating-scandal-instead

We did find a report from NBC, downplaying the story's significance and ending with a hilarious statement from Joffe’s spokesperson, calling him “apolitical.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/tech-exec-used-access-white-house-computers-look-dirt-trump-says-speci-rcna16123

Better: The Daily Caller tells it without the unintentional humor.:

https://dailycaller.com/2022/02/14/trump-clinton-fbi-russia-collusion-durham/

Mike Huckabee

“We’ve never seen anything like this in American history,” said Mark Levin in the intro to his Sunday night show, referring to the 'collusion’ among the Obama/Biden administrations, the Hillary campaign/DNC, and Mark Elias/Michael Sussmann/Perkins Coie and the creators of the fake Steele “dossier,” all to push the Trump-Russia narrative and repeated coup attempts against President Trump. “THAT’S the insurrection.” he said. “That’s what took place --- the effort to overthrow an elected President of the United States.”

Durham’s latest filing in the Michael Sussmann case, released Friday night, goes to a place that even we hadn’t even anticipated --- a place where Hillary’s people didn’t just spy on Trump the candidate. Most shocking of all, Durham says he has evidence to show they continued to spy on him after he became President, by way of “Tech Executive -1,” Rodney Jaffe, and his hacking of the President’s internet servers. (!!!) If we didn’t predict Durham would find this, it was only because we didn’t realize it was possible. If the President’s internet server, at that ultimate level of classification, is hackable, then who knows where our most sensitive national security information ended up?

Quoting from Durham: “The Government’s evidence at trial will also establish that among the Internet data Tech Executive – 1 and his associates exploited was domain name system (“DNS”) Internet traffic pertaining to (i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) DONALD TRUMP’S CENTRAL PARK WEST APARTMENT BUILDING, and (iv) THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (‘EOP’) [emphasis ours].”

According to the report, Jaffe “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP.” They “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”

In a sane world, this story would be THE headline from every news outlet. It’s hardly possible even to describe how earth-shaking it is. As the story in RedState says, “This blows Watergate out of the water and makes it look like child’s play. Only in the current hyper-partisan environment, where Democrats can literally get away with anything, is this not a major political scandal. Here you have associates of Hillary Clinton, and allies of the law firm she was contracting to get dirt on Trump, using government channels to spy on him. And not just during the campaign, but after he became President.”

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/12/john-durham-drops-a-shock-and-awe-filing-about-spying-on-donald-trump-n521239

Recall the way Trump was ridiculed for claiming Trump Tower was spied on. Well, it WAS, by Hillary’s people, and now Durham says he can show it was even worse –- they spied on his personal residence, and even after he became President, they spied on the White House. FOX News took viewers down memory lane on Sunday, also reminding us that one of the conspiratorial liars, Jake Sullivan, is currently working in the Biden White House.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1oESBHPv8Y

Byron York says this newest revelation proves Trump was right. In fact, one has to wonder if Trump might not have had an insider all along who advised him of what was happening. SOMEBODY told him.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Sunday morning that this new Durham filing shows the spying on Trump was “worse than we thought, as it showed the government was working with Hillary’s campaign. “We’ve never seen anything like that in history.”

https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/13/jim-jordan-durham-filing-shows-spying-trump-was-wo/

Kash Patel, former chief investigator of the Trump-Russia probe for the House Intel Committee, said the filing “definitively shows that the Hillary Clinton campaign directly funded and ordered its lawyers at Perkins Coie to orchestrate a criminal enterprise to fabricate a connection between President Trump and Russia.” Legal Insurrection has a comprehensive overview of the Durham filing, highly recommended reading.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/durham-court-filing-hillarys-campaign-spied-on-trump-tower-trump-apartment-bldg-white-house-internet-traffic/

“Dilbert” creator and author Scott Adams, in his podcast “Coffee with Scott Adams,” addressed this on Sunday. “It looks like the campaign was definitely involved,” he said, “in something that looks like an insurrection.” I like his choice of words here: insurrection. “Now, keep in mind,” he said, “this wasn’t an FBI investigation, right? This was some lawyers who had some access to some technology guys who had some access to some data. This is about the most illegal thing you’ve ever heard of.”

And it happened to him after he was not just a candidate –- which was bad enough –- but the sitting President. Of all the things we’ve ever heard about that were said to be “worse than Watergate,” he said, this is the first one that really has been worse than Watergate!

Adams pointed out something we’ve noted before: that Jake Sullivan, who worked for Hillary and now is President Bien’s national security adviser, was deeply involved in this scheme. So was Marc Elias, who was, and is, busy trying to cook elections with new rules and redistricting, state-by-state, with the stated purpose of electing more Democrats.

“Basically, everything that was your worst imagination of what was happening seems to be coming true,” he said. He agreed with what we’ve been saying for years, that everything Democrats accuse Republicans of doing is what they, the Democrats, are doing. If you want to know what they’re up to, your first clue is the fake stories they tell about the GOP.

Adams had checked CNN’s home page and, sure enough, the story wasn’t there, not even a little bit. Same with MSNBC. They’d tossed that file down the memory hole. And Democrats get away with this, because their audience watches only them. As if Democrats would ever tune in to Fox News to find out what’s going on!

So, what DID CNN talk about Sunday morning? Main story on their home page: More on Joe Rogan and the n-word, with an opinion piece linking the fact that Rogan’s still on the air with the January 6 insurrection, saying both of these things tear at the fabric of our country. Not kidding.

(NOTE: For an update, we looked at the CNN home page late Sunday night. The Durham story still was not there, but we did learn that Team Fluff had won the Puppy Bowl.)

“They’re ‘disappearing’ a gigantic story, successfully...It’s mind-boggling,” Adams said, describing the scandal as “a Hillary Clinton insurrection against the government.”

As a palate-cleanser after that sad observation about the state of “journalism,” I’d like to leave you with an incredible piece of in-depth investigative reporting that explains just what “The Swamp” is, how it came to be, and how our government is now structured to incorporate what is essentially the fourth branch of government --- the “Intelligence Branch” --- which appears to be running the show. They’re not even accountable to the President, as they choose what intelligence to share with the White House. Please, when you can, make some time to take all of this in. It might be the biggest wake-up call for our country that I have ever read.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/02/12/the-surveillance-and-political-spying-operations-highlighted-by-john-durham-are-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

Finally, don't miss the best video commentary from the weekend on what Hillary's campaign did, from Steve Hilton on "The Next Revolution."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN9IsEw5y4U

Mike Huckabee

“Crackpipe-gate” (as it’s facetiously been dubbed) has taken another twist or three. You’ll remember that the Washington Free Beacon reported that $30 million allocated by the Biden Administration was going to include “smoking kits” to make smoking crack and other illicit substances more sanitary for addicts, and that the kits include crack pipes. The White House denied that it was supplying free crack pipes. 

Now, the Washington Post reports that the Free Beacon reporter who wrote the story said the HHS spokesperson did not specifically say that the kits would include crack pipes, but he did confirm that the kits were for smoking crack, and based on what’s included in such kits around the country, they reported that the government would be funding crack pipes.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/02/12/crackpipegate-just-got-a-lot-more-interesting-and-confusing-n521410

That's a point for the White House's side. But even WaPo admitted that it’s unclear what HHS’ intentions were, since the story ran before the kits were created.

Now, here’s another twist: Jeff Charles at Redstate.com reports that Biden is under fire now for denying that he plans to give out free crack pipes (and no, not from his son Hunter.) A nonprofit group called the Drug Policy Alliance that seeks “alternatives to strict laws” in aiding addicts, is angry because it was under the impression that the Administration did intend to include crack pipes in the kits. A spokesman fumed, “It would seem pointless to distribute these kits without” pipes, which “are the main part of the smoking kit to prevent the transmission of disease.”

(Although I feel I should mention that they are the main part of transmitting crack, which is arguably worse than disease.)

And another twist: The Free Beacon fired back that the HHS spokesman told them that they do “not specify what is in the kits, leaving that detail to program participants at the local level.” And we know some local programs have given out free crack pipes.

As to the question of whether Biden’s HHS planned to give away taxpayer-funded crack pipes to addicts, it’s not clear whether they did or didn’t. There don’t seem to be any strong denials, though, that they wanted to give away syringes. So either way, they’re using our tax money to help addicts keep using crack and heroin in the name of “compassion and public health.” I don’t think they understand what either of those terms means.

Mike Huckabee

On Sunday, Nancy Pelosi raised eyebrows (not her own, of course) by claiming that we have runaway inflation because the Biden economy is just so darn good. She said the Biden rescue plan put money in people’s pockets, and "The fact that people have jobs always contributes to an increase in inflation. And that's a good thing. But inflation is not good, you know, we have to contain it."

At this link, former Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow offers her a helpful remedial lesson in what “inflation” is and what actually causes it.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/kudlow-root-cause-inflation

In a nutshell: Inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing too few products, which drives up prices. It’s not caused by the current unemployment rate, which is artificially low because it only counts people who are actively looking for a job.

When people are working, they’re creating more products. But when the government is printing a lot of dollars that didn’t exist before and giving them to people to sit home and not work, there are fewer products. There are also fewer products when you have an Administration that allows a supply chain crisis to go on and on and never solve it, or that declares war on the domestic fossil fuel industry. You know, like we have now.

In short, it’s caused by Biden and the Democrats in Congress creating too many dollars and ensuring that they are chasing too few products. So if you want to bring down inflation, you either have to convince the Democrats to reverse all their cherished failed policies, or you have to kick them out of office. Guess which one would be easier?

Mike Huckabee

Did you know that Jake Sullivan’s wife is reportedly a top adviser for Attorney General Merrick Garland in the Department of "Justice"? According to POLITICO, Maggie Goodlander not only clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer but also for Garland when he was on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. (A story in the New Hampshire Bar News says she found it “really painful” and “an abdication of duty” that the Senate didn’t take up Garland’s nomination for Supreme Court.) With Biden's election and Garland's appointment, she became his counsel in the attorney general’s office, where she now works.

Jake Sullivan, as you definitely know, works in the White House as Biden’s national security adviser and also played a huge role in the spread of the fake Trump-Russia story. He hasn’t been indicted at this point, but at the very least could be called as a witness.

Goodlander must recuse herself immediately from anything involving the Durham investigation. Washington, DC, is so incestuous, this is no doubt just one of many conflicts of interest that will emerge before Durham is done.

As a side note, during President Trump’s impeachment trial, she served as counsel for the HouseReason #10,398 To Homeschool Your Kids: Judiciary Committee and House Managers, trying to help them get Trump convicted and removed from office. Her husband must have been so proud.

But do you see the problem? It's not a good look, even for this DOJ.

POLITICO could have used a chart to show all the relationships among Jake Sullivan, his family members, and other DC players.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2021/06/02/the-other-sullivan-s-493091

Mike Huckabee

Note: Troy Nehls is pictured here in the blue shirt on Jan. 6.

In an update to the U.S. Capitol Police story, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas accused USCP Chief Tom Manger on Tuesday of telling “a bold-faced lie” when he said Nehls was never being investigated. As you know, Nehls is accusing them of illegally entering his office on two separate days last November, photographing the notes on his whiteboard (yes, SPYING) and later questioning a staff member about that content.

As Nehls alleged, “The Capitol Police Intelligence Division investigated my office illegally and one of my staffers caught them in the act” He said they proceeded to take photos of “confidential legislative products protected by the Speech and Debate clause enshrined in the Constitution, Article 1 Section 6.” He says he personally told the chief what was wrong about this and is quite unsatisfied with the responses he got to his concerns. In fact, he got the distinct impression that it was he who was considered the ‘threat.’

https://thepostmillennial.com/rep-troy-nehls-pushes-back-at-capitol-police-chief-denies-investigation

The USCP Inspector General has announced an internal investigation of the Capitol Police and their surveillance practices. The USCP maintains that Nehls’ door was wide open and that they were doing their duty when they checked things out. Chief Manger said, “The United States Capitol Police is sworn to protect Members of Congress. If a Member’s office is left open and unsecured, without anyone inside the office, USCP officers are directed to document that and secure the office to ensure no one can wander in and steal or do anything else nefarious.”

Well, that all sounds fine as far as it goes –- assuming the door WAS left open (we have their word, but so far nothing else) --- but it does not explain why they photographed the whiteboard or why, two days later, investigators disguised as construction workers stopped by and started questioning a lone staffer about what was written on it. It fails to address that at all.

A spokesperson for Rep. Nehls offered some food for thought: “Imagine leaving your front door open and police enter your private home, take pictures of the inside, and then open a criminal investigation based on those pictures.”

“How can Chief Manger issue a statement, and fail to mention the photograph that was illegally taken,” she asked. Here is Rep. Nehls’ full press release.

https://nehls.house.gov/posts/rep-nehls-reveals-he-was-targeted-in-malicious-capitol-police-criminal-investigation?oRef=ncl_amplify

House Republicans are now calling on Speaker Pelosi and Chairwoman on House Administration Zoe Lofgren, also a Democrat from California, to investigate the USCP surveillance activities, noting the constitutional issues they raise. (Question for House GOP: Do any of you trust Nancy Pelosi to set up a real investigation, especially when that would involve being investigated herself?)

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/09/capitol-police-issue-an-unbelievable-statement-after-accusations-of-spying-on-congress-n519831

Also, Nehls says that he and 26 of his House Republican colleagues have written to Chief Manger demanding that the USCP preserve all of their records related to any investigative activity involving any legislators or their staff members. This isn’t the first time Nehls has written to Chief Manger…

https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2021/10/texas-representative-asks-dc-police-chief-doj-to-make-ashli-babbitt-shooting-documents-public/

That’s right, it was Nehls who wrote to Chief Manger in October of last year, asking for a more thorough investigation into Ashli Babbitt’s death and requesting public disclosure of related documents. He said at that time he had personally reviewed all materials available relating to January 6. “Based on my extensive law enforcement experience,” he wrote, “I see nothing that could have possibly justified the use of lethal force against Ms. Babbitt…It is simply implausible that a single unarmed individual crawling through a broken window could have presented a serious life and death threat to LT Byrd or Members of Congress.”

He even said in the letter that it had been suggested by other USCP officers that the investigation into Byrd was dropped “because of his position and other political considerations.” Whew, one can see that IF the Capitol Police WERE going to spy on a member of Congress, it likely would be Nehls.

https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2021/10/texas-representative-asks-dc-police-chief-doj-to-make-ashli-babbitt-shooting-documents-public/

Rep. Nehls appeared with Laura Ingraham on her FOX News show Wednesday night, after Ingraham played a video clip of Speaker Nancy Pelosi denying she had any authority over the Capitol Police. “I have no power over the Capitol Police --- does anybody not know that?” she asked rhetorically with a broad smile. “Capitol Police have responded to that gentleman’s [Nehls’] allegation, and that stands as what it is. But I have no power over the police.”

Nehls was not surprised that Pelosi said nothing nice about him, as he’s been a vocal critic. Prior to his election to Congress, he worked in law enforcement for 30 years –- 8 years as a sheriff –- and he accuses the USPC intelligence division of having “all of the material” ahead of the Capitol Hill rally that would have told them to be on guard against potentially disruptive extremist groups who were coming to the Capitol on January 6.

“January 6 should’ve never happened,” he has said repeatedly. “The Capitol Police had the intelligence; they didn’t share it.” He told Ingraham that as someone who himself has conducted investigations, he continues to be quite vocal, specifically about Ashli Babbitt’s death and the “way too quick” dismissal of charges against her shooter, Lt. Michael Byrd. Apparently his letter last fall got no results.

With his lengthy and impressive law enforcement background, Nehls seems like someone who would’ve been an asset on Pelosi’s “Special Committee” to look into January 6. Yet she refused to seat hm.

“...She doesn’t want me talking about January 6,” he said, “because I think, in the end, she had a role to play.”

Racism is a symptom, not the source. It’s the effect, but not the cause. It’s the manifestation of evil, but not the root of evil. We hear about racism everyday as if it’s the reason for all conflicts in our country. But America doesn’t have a skin problem—we have a SIN problem. And racism is based on a Satanic lie of the real essence of ALL sin—pride. The notion that some people think they are just better than others. And when one thinks he or she is better, that person believes they shouldn’t have to be held to the same standards. Political division is also fueled by pride—those who believe their ideas and their policies and the people they support are just better. And the result is that different standards are applied. The reason that Rosa Parks was told to sit in the back of the bus was that the arrogant pride of some people who didn’t think she was as good as they were. The reason that a teenager named Clarence Henderson risked his life to sit at a lunch counter at a Woolworth in North Carolina was because some people didn’t think he deserved to be seated at the same lunch counter because they didn’t think he was good as they were. The reason that 9 young high school students had to be escorted to Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957 was due to some in the community not believing those kids were as smart and capable as their kids were. All of those things were racist. They were all evil and sinful. But all were because of the real sin of pride. It showed itself as racism; it was rooted in pride.

Whenever there is a double standard, it’s the same root sin as racism. If the Governor of CA orders the citizens to wear a mask in public but he takes his off at a football game, it’s his pride in thinking he’s just better than you. If members of Congress demand to get the transcript of a phone call between President Trump and the President of Ukraine and actually impeach the President because of what was said in the call, but the same members of Congress don’t demand public disclosure of a phone call between President Biden and the President of Ukraine this week, it’s because they believe their side is just better than your side. If a podcast host like Joe Rogan gets crucified for allowing highly competent scientists to say lockdowns and masks don’t work and is called out for spewing medical misinformation, even after the CDC releases a report that actually says the same thing, it’s not misinformation people are going crazy over—they just think the people they listen to are better than the people you listen to. If protesters in many major cities burn police stations, loot and firebomb private businesses and beat up innocent people on the streets yet politicians defend them as “mostly peaceful” but when protesters go to the US Capitol and protest, they are insurrectionists doing more harm than 9-11, Pearl Harbor, or the Civil War, they aren’t really that crazy to believe that—they just think the protesters they support are better than those they don’t. If Hillary, Joe Biden, Stacey Abrams and others can question the integrity of an election and claim it was rigged, but Donald Trump is permanently banned from Twitter and FB for saying it, it’s just another example of the arrogant pride that some folks think their armpits don’t stink—but yours do. Like racism, it’s a symptom of deadly and dangerous pride. It’s not political—it’s a spiritual sickness. But we will never correct it if we misdiagnose it and fail to see it for what it really is—selfish arrogance of pride that is willing to put a different standard on you than on themselves because they actually believe they are better than you!

Mike Huckabee

The Democrats’ efforts to intimidate Sen. Joe Manchin into toeing the party line not only haven’t worked, they seem to have made him even more independent, maybe because polls show that he’s by far the most popular Democrat in West Virginia. Now, it’s as if he’s just deliberately rubbing their noses in it for fun by endorsing the reelection of a Republican colleague.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/manchin-is-going-to-tick-off-more-dems-big-time-with-his-latest-remarks-n518288

Manchin said it doesn’t matter if he’s a Democrat and they’re Republicans, they’re “good people,” “they’ve been my dear friends, we get a lot accomplished and I think the country has fared better with us working together than not.” So “why in the world wouldn’t I want to work with them and continue to work with them?”

Sure, it’s Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whom even a lot of Republicans would like to replace, hence all her conservative primary challengers. Still, when you’re trying to ram a leftist agenda down America’s throats with a 50-50 tie, having a fellow Democrat act like a bipartisan statesman and endorse any Republican’s reelection has got to feel like your party’s symbol the donkey just kicked you in a sensitive area.

Mike Huckabee

Canadian government officials who have grown more and more authoritarian with their COVID mandates seem to be panicking and hitting the Emergency Tyrant Button over the Truckers’ Freedom Convoy.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/ottawa-declares-state-of-emergency-reports-of-police-arresting-truckers-seizing-fuel-n518343

It doesn’t seem to be working, though, as workers around the world have had enough of destructive, ironfisted, rights-crushing lockdowns imposed under the guise of “stopping the spread” of COVID (something that a new study by a Johns Hopkins University researcher found they failed to do.) The Canadian truckers are inspiring similar working class revolts worldwide.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-style-trucker-protests-spread-world

It’s prompted conservatives to note that there is finally a real, grassroots movement for “workers of the world to unite and throw off their shackles,” and socialists are terrified of it.

The truckers have been talked down to, slandered and targeted with “multiple investigations;” they’ve been called violent, Russian agents, QAnon members, racists and homophobes; and they've been ordered to go home. They tried to tow them away, but the tow truck drivers refused. They considered calling in the Army, but the Army said, “Not our fight.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/02/07/honk-honk-canadian-pm-wont-send-the-army-to-remove-antimandate-truckers-for-a-simple-reason-n2602911

Some of the counter-protesters have reportedly tried false flag operations to discredit the truckers, and one attempted a hoax so laughable that it made Jussie Smollett look competent.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/watch-counter-protester-caught-faking-getting-hit-by-freedom-convoy-truck-n518383

Now, they’re being threatened with arrest for peacefully assembling to protest the government. Short of shooting them or throwing them in prison for a year or so while they decide what to charge them with, that’s pretty much the entire leftwing government playbook for dealing with dissent by working people.

By the way, here’s some of the “violent” criminal behavior the left is so worked up about: it includes dancing to “We Are Family,” setting up bouncy houses for kids and holding outdoor church services. I thought liberals wanted all church services to be held outdoors in Canada in February.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/06/ottawa-declares-state-of-emergency-reports-of-police-arresting-truckers-seizing-fuel-n518343

I wonder if any of the elitists who are so angry at these truckers realize how their very privileged lives would quickly devolve if the truckers did all decide to just go home and stay there, instead of delivering goods to the city dwellers who look down on them.

What The Canadian Truckers Stand For:

For those accusing the Canadian Truckers of being white supremacists, QAnon insurrectionists or the whole litany of tired leftist clichés, here’s their statement about what they stand for, direct from their new fundraising page at GiveSendGo. I warn you, this is some pretty scary revolutionary rhetoric:

https://www.westernjournal.com/flashback-years-gofundme-ripped-9-million-peaceful-truckers-actively-promoted-violent-takeover-seattle/

"We are a peaceful country that has helped protect nations across the globe from tyrannical governments who oppressed their people, and now it seems it is happening here...

We are taking our fight to the doorsteps of our Federal Government, and demanding that they cease all mandates against its people. Small businesses are being destroyed, homes are being destroyed and people are being mistreated and denied fundamental necessities to survive. It's our duty as Canadians to put an end to (these) mandates. It is imperative that this happens because if we don't our country will no longer be the country we have come to love. We are doing this for our future Generations and to regain our lives back."

Imagine the effrontery of those peasants, wanting their lives back!

GoFundMe.com Reverses Itself:

After being hit with a storm of outrage and threats of fraud investigations by Sen. Ted Cruz and a couple of red state Governors and Attorneys General, GoFundMe.com reversed itself and decided that donors to the Canadian Truckers’ Convoy will get automatic refunds. The site won’t require them to apply for a refund or send the money to some other charity of the site’s choosing. So for those keeping score, the only act of violence on the part of the truckers is that they helped GoFundMe’s executives shoot themselves in the foot.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/gofundme-backtracks-canadian-trucker-money-fraud-investigation-threat

(Also, an Ottawa city council member deleted his tweet about how he was working on a plan to “legally” confiscate their donations. I’m sure he’s had lots of experience in coming up with ways to legally confiscate other people’s money.)

https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-leader-deletes-tweet-saying-hell-target-freedom-trucker-convoys-gofundme-donations

I might be more sympathetic to GoFundMe’s claims about violations of its Terms of Service if the same site didn’t have a history of providing fundraising for various leftist criminals and violent protesters. Here’s a walk down memory lane by way of the prison yard, to revisit some of the fine upstanding leftists that GoFundMe has helped to support.

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/02/05/andy-ngo-has-the-thread-of-the-year-showing-gofundme-doesnt-seem-to-take-issue-with-fundraising-for-leftist-occupations/

(Also worth reminding you: Kamala Harris and her staff endorsed and contributed to a fund to bail out Minneapolis rioters who got out of jail and went right back to doing it again.)

To prove that some businesses are actually more interested in fulfilling their mission to serve customers than in kowtowing to leftists, the competing fundraising site GiveSendGo accepted a fundraiser for the Canadian truckers. As of this writing on Monday morning, it had already received over $4.3 million in donations.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gofundme-betrays-freedom-convoy-donors-donations-truckers-new-crowdfunding-site-skyrocket/

Mike Huckabee

Failed-but-trying-again Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey “I wuz robbed!” Abrams is a big proponent of the usual hardcore Democrat COVID restrictions, like forcing kids to wear masks in school. So she caught a lot of flak over a photo of her visiting a classroom where she posed Gavin Newsom-style: surrounded by kids who were all masked while she wasn’t.

https://redstate.com/beccalower/2022/02/06/stacey-abrams-snaps-back-over-criticism-of-her-mask-free-photo-op-n518295

The criticism must’ve really stung because her campaign angrily fired back with an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink response that accused her opponents of racism, disrespecting Black History Month, profiting from pharmaceutical stocks, not funding Medicaid enough, and of course, “TRUUUUUUUUMP!!!!”

None of which actually explained why it was okay for her to be in the classroom without a mask but not for all the kids to be without one.

She should try stealing an excuse from the mayor of Los Angeles and claim that since it was only for the photo, she held her breath for 1/125th of a second.

Related: If Stacey Abrams can go around in public without the masks they force on kids, why can’t an entire New York school board?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2022/02/06/n-y-school-board-photographed-unmasked-inside-for-legislative-event-parents-livid-n1556667

Mike Huckabee

In May, the Biden Administration will begin distributing grants to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use “safer” for addicts.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admin-to-fund-crack-pipe-distribution-to-advance-racial-equity/

This includes funds to provide “smoking kits” which will include new, sanitary pipes for smoking crack, meth and other “illicit substances.” After all, we want to make sure that when someone is smoking crack, they’re doing it the safe, healthy way. Other government-provided supplies will include clean syringes. This funding is part of the Democrats’ “American Rescue Plan,” which passed the Senate on party lines with Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. It’s being sold as part of the Democrats’ “equity” push, with preference going to drug paraphernalia suppliers who serve the African-American and LGBTQ communities of hard drug addicts.

Some might have a different word for this other than “rescue,” “equity” or “compassion.” A word like “enabler.” That’s the term used in 12-step programs for people who think they’re “helping” addicts but who are actually just helping them to kill themselves. Some might even say that deliberately enabling black and gay addicts to continue smoking crack or meth instead of helping them get off of it is shockingly racist and homophobic. I guess they just don’t understand “equity.”

Similar programs have been tried in blue cities, and some have given up after seeing how they just increased open drug addiction. It’s certainly worked like gangbusters in San Francisco and Seattle. If you’re old enough to remember when “SNL” was funny, they once did a sketch about Democrats mourning Michael Dukakis’ presidential loss in which a Joan Baez impersonator sang sadly about the Democrats’ lost dream: “Free needles for the addicts, free condoms for the kids…” Back then, it was meant to satirize the crazy things Republicans believed Democrats would do if they got into power. Today, Democrats are in power, and that's the official government policy. Moral: Never underestimate how crazy Democrats become when they get a little power.

PS – As I tweeted when I first heard about this story, Presidential relatives have often had an impact on policy. Lady Bird Johnson beautified the highways, Laura Bush promoted literacy, and now Hunter Biden has inspired free government crack pipes.

Mike Huckabee

Perhaps you’ve noticed that we almost never cite The New York Times or the Washington Post as sources for any story we use in my newsletter. And for any story that originated in either of those two publications, even if it happened to be picked up by other news outlets, we’ve applied the “48-hour rule” –- often it’s more like 72 hours –- before reacting to it as serious reporting. There have just been too many stories that turned out to be strategic leaks from the FBI or similarly dicey anonymous sources or that were garbage reported simply because they furthered a preferred narrative.

There’s another reason why these big-deal “papers of record” should not be mistaken for serious journalism, and that’s the hotbed of connections to Democrat politics and administrations they are. One example in the news right now is the promotion of Matea Gold to be the new national editor at WAPO. A month before her promotion, her husband Jonathan Lenzner was promoted as well –- to be the new FBI chief of staff.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/02/01/new_washington_post_national_editor_recuses_herself_from_fbi_coverage_814615.html

Gold is now having to recuse herself from all coverage of the FBI and the Justice Department, including the Durham special counsel investigation, with managing editor Steven Ginsberg overseeing it instead. She also won’t be covering the ongoing January 6 investigation, including the probe led by FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Gosh, what’s left for her to oversee? It’s easy to imagine her taking lots of long lunches and leisurely massages, with Ginsberg doing the work and probably deserving a raise.

According to Paul Sperry’s sources, the conflict of interest posed by Gold’s husband was discussed at a recent staff-wide meeting. Lenzner’s family is “allied politically with the Clintons” and has been for many years. This seems not to have been a problem before –- and why should it be at WAPO? –- but with his new job at the FBI, the spotlight is shining more brightly.

The decision does not reflect on Gold’s objectivity or credibility, according to a WAPO spokesperson. “We have every confidence in Matea’s professionalism and high standards. “She has recused herself from all areas of coverage to avoid even the appearance of partiality.”

So, there was a conflict of interest and she recused herself. Problem solved, right? Well, not so fast. As Paul Sperry points out, considerable damage had already been done. “In her previous role as investigations editor,” he writes, “Gold helped oversee the Post’s coverage of the Russian ‘collusion’ accusations against Trump and his advisers, including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.”

In other words, she might be recusing herself now that her personal conflict of interest has grown too huge to ignore, but she’s spent years helping perpetuate the Russia Hoax.

Reading WAPO’s own story about Gold’s promotion, one would never know that they’ve had to retract or correct numerous stories about Trump that she oversaw. “For the last four years,” it reads, “Matea has served as the national political enterprise and investigations editor, running some of the Post’s most sensitive stories, including coverage of the Russia investigation, the Ukraine pressure campaign and President Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election results. Reporters and other editors gravitate to Matea for guidance and direction.”

In September 2017, Gold shared a byline on a story that furthered the false claim that President Trump has said there were “fine people” among the white supremacists and neo-Nazis protesting the removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, when he specifically condemned those people.

So, never mind the frequent and serious journalistic errors and outright lies. This editor gets promoted. And other "journalists" look to her for guidance.

As Sperry points out, it’s “not uncommon” –- we’d say it’s actually very common –- for journalists in DC “to be married to government officials, lobbyists and others who influence policy from various vantage points.” But even in that world, Gold’s might be considered an extreme case.

Perhaps you’re old enough to remember the name Terry Lenzner, who was the private investigator Bill Clinton hired to use to dig up dirt on troublesome mistresses and other political threats. It was said at the time that this was done with the knowledge and approval of Hillary, to tamp down the various “bimbo eruptions.” Lenzner founded the firm Investigative Firm International, or IGI. During the Ken Starr investigation, he was brought in to testify about his aggressive investigative work for President Clinton. Terry Lenzner retired in 2015 and has since passed away.

Matea Gold’s husband Jon is the son of Terry Lenzner. After Terry retired, he took over IGI and continued his father’s work. Father and son were both Democrats and Clinton donors, with Jon giving at least $1,700 to Hillary’s 2016 campaign according to FEC records.

So, THIS is the guy Christopher Wray appointed as his chief of staff in December. Goodness, we’re not only learning a lot today about WAPO, but also about Wray’s FBI. And none of it is good.

The FBI made this appointment quietly, avoiding mention of Lenzner’s background with the Clintons or IGI. On their website, they distanced him from it this way: “From 2013 to 2018, Mr. Lenzner led a national risk advisory, corporate investigations and crisis management firm in Washington, including three years as its CEO.”

Recall that other FBI officials were highly sympathetic to Hillary and the Clinton political machine, even those who were supposed to be investigating her such as then-deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, another Clinton crony, generously bankrolled McCabe’s wife in her failed run for the Virginia state legislature. Political conflicts seem to be quite common at the FBI, too.

Sperry reports an interesting side note: IGI was the first investigation firm to launder payments for “opposition research” (dirt) for political campaigns through law firms so that no payments to IGI showed up on FEC disclosures. They did this at least as far back as 1994, for Ted Kennedy. So Hillary was acting in a grand Democrat tradition when she funneled over $1 million to Perkins Coie for the dirt-digging done by Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele.

IGI has multiple connections to the Clintons. Jon’s sister Emily is a Biden donor who sits on IGI’s board. She previously worked in the Clinton White House under George Stephanopoulos and later worked for him at ABC News. (More incest with journalism.)

The late Brooke Shearer, sister of Clinton crony Cody Shearer, worked for Hillary in the White House and then took an investigative job at IGI. (Makes one wonder what sort of work she did for Hillary.) Brooke was also the wife of Clinton ally Strobe Talbott of the Brookings Institution, which seems to have been up to its eyeballs in the creation and peddling of the Steele “dossier.” Cody Shearer even created his own anti-Trump “dossier.”

Sperry’s piece has even more. One bit of irony is that Gold, with her amazing conflicts of interest that are only now coming to light, participated in a PBS panel on the White House transition in 2016. It was called “Trump Family Criticized for Conflicts of Interest.”

Mike Huckabee

American history education is at such a low point that polls about the best or worst anything “ever” are meaningless. Very few people these days have the foggiest notion of what happened before they came on the scene. It’s why there are so many YouTube videos about the “Worst Movies Ever” that include nothing made before 1995 (they never heard of Ed Wood?) It’s also why polls on the “Worst President Ever” are fairly pointless. How many people these days can honestly say whether Trump or Biden was better or worse at the job than, say, James K. Polk?

But a new Rasmussen poll that shows Biden falling into “Worst President Ever” territory does contain some useful info worth discussing.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/biden-in-worst-president-ever-territory

Respondents were about evenly split on whether Obama was among the best ever, the worst or about average. That seems reasonable and predictable. With Trump, 41% said best, 43% said worst, and only 12% said average, which suggests that his coverage was so partisan and feelings so inflamed that hardly anyone was on the fence. But it was still a pretty even split. However, with Biden, 25% said average, only a diehard partisan 15% said best, and a whopping 54% said “worst.” Even among Democrats, “worst” edged out “best” by 28-27%.

Assessing Biden’s place in history will fall to historians, if there are any unbiased historians left. But you know he’s doing a pretty lousy job when even his own partisan base is more likely to think he’s the worst President ever than the best.

Oh, and for the record, trust me: James K. Polk was a FAR better President than Biden. Polk oversaw bringing Texas and most of the states that are now the western half of the US into the union from Mexico. All Biden’s done is open up the borders of those states.

Mike Huckabee

Over the past couple of weeks, a story has been developing about a ‘rift” between Special Counsel John Durham and Inspector General Michael Horowitz concerning some evidence that Durham had not received from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Just how important is this evidence, and why is Durham only now finding out about it? What does it mean to the Special Counsel investigation? Thanks to some outstanding reporting, this story is starting to gel, but some questions are unanswered.

The Epoch Times has a detailed new piece by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke; it’s “premium,” so we’ve boiled it down and tried to make a complicated legal morass –- which can certainly happen with two investigations going on at the same time –- a little clearer.

Recall that Horowitz’s report was critical of the FBI but ultimately determined –- to the dismay of many, including me –- that the FBI had actually opened “Crossfire Hurricane” in good faith, with adequate “predication” (justification). Keep in mind that the OIG report was internal, dealing only with employees of the Justice (“Justice”) Department, while Durham’s has broad subpoena power and can bring criminal charges.

In a court filing dated January 25, Durham said Horowitz had failed to turn over to his office a couple of cellphones used by FBI General Counsel James Baker. This evidence was needed in connection with two investigations: the prosecution of Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann and the criminal leak investigation of Baker himself.

According to Durham’s updated filing on January 28, Horowitz’s office then told Durham that “the cellphones likely were discussed” in a conference call that took place almost four years ago, on February 12, 2018. But Durham said he doesn’t recall this discussion. He knew nothing about Horowitz’s possession of Baker’s cellphone until he was briefed by a separate FBI investigative team just a few weeks ago, on January 6.

It doesn’t seem likely the phones were discussed during that conference call, because Horowitz didn’t even get them until February 15, three days after the call, and there’s no record he informed Durham about receiving them. And Horowitz doesn’t remember for sure if he mentioned them, even though Durham was investigating Baker at the time for making “unauthorized disclosures to the media," meaning criminally leaking. One would assume those phones would be pretty important.

https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2019-01-15-JDJ-MM-to-Durham-re-briefing.pdf?platform=hootsuite

It sure looks as though Durham didn’t know about the existence of those phones until Jan. 5, because on that day, he was seeking Baker’s “call log data” from the FBI’s Inspection Division. If he’d known about the phones, would he have needed the logs?

But there’s more of even greater interest in Durham’s January 25 filing. Amazingly, Horowitz also failed to disclose that he and his general counsel had met personally with Sussmann (!) regarding a “cyber matter” in March 2017. He also failed to disclose the identity of a Hillary-connected individual who provided the data to Sussmann that led to that meeting. And this is a big deal --- a huge part of Durham’s case against Sussmann.

Worse, Durham didn’t find this out from Horowitz, but from other sources, including Sussmann’s attorneys, who are entitled to discovery and apparently told him in their discovery meeting on January 20, “Hey, wait a minute, there’s nothing here about our client’s meeting with the OIG.” That material was missing even though Durham’s office had formally requested the OIG provide “all documents, records and information” in their possession regarding Sussmann.

The OIG did turn over some “relevant transcripts of interviews” about Crossfire Hurricane and, on December 17, 2021, a forensic report on the “cyber matter” that Sussmann had reported to the OIG. The “cyber matter” was that one of Sussmann’s clients (apparently “Tech Executive – 1” Rodney Jaffe) “had observed that a specific OIG employee’s computer was ‘seen publicly’ in ‘Internet traffic’ and was connected to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) in a foreign country.”

Horowitz told the Special Counsel that this was all he had. Durham provided it to Sussmann’s defense team on December 23, 2021.

Recall that Rodney Jaffe was coordinating with agents of the Clinton campaign to create the outlandish and quickly discredited story about Trump Tower communicating with Alfa Bank, to make it seem as if Trump had been signaling to the Kremlin. Jaffe was working with computer researchers at Georgia Tech to access private information, after which Georgia Tech got a $17 million Pentagon contract to research cybersecurity.

So, big question: who is this mysterious OIG employee? Why was Sussmann briefing Horowitz on this person’s activities? We want to know why Sussmann, who was a private attorney and not with the DOJ, would have been meeting with Horowitz, an internal affairs investigator, in early 2017. This was just a few weeks after pushing derogatory (and false) information about Trump to the CIA. It was also just a couple of months after Horowitz announced he was looking into the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane.

Regarding those phones of Baker’s, Durham asked the OIG on January 10 to conduct an “additional forensic examination.” On January 26, the day after Durham’s legal filing on the withheld evidence, the OIG finally responded with the forensic reports. But then, in his filing of January 28, Durham disclosed that Horowitz’s office had still MORE phones relating to the criminal leak investigation of Baker. Durham seems to have just found out about these in the past few days.

If you wonder why investigations take so ridiculously long, this one episode should give you some idea. But what a strange turn of events for defense attorneys to be providing the prosecutor with information that surprised him.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/durham-filing-rebuts-inspector-general-horowitzs-claims-on-missing-cellphones-hints-at-growing-rift_

In case you missed Aaron Mate’s very detailed analysis of Durham vs. Horowitz from January 20 and have some time to catch up, here’s the link. The editors at RealClear Investigations sum it up this way: “As he exposes the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in false allegations about Trump-Russia collusion, Special Counsel John Durham is sharply challenging FBI apologists who claim dubious vindication from an inspector general’s finding that the Bureau’s probe was launched in good faith, Aaron Mate reports...”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/01/20/the_tension_over_truth_and_consequences_gripping_the_fbis_trump-russia_reckoning_812321.html

Here’s another helpful refresher on Durham’s investigation from a few months ago. You might recognize the byline…

https://stream.org/special-counsel-update-durhams-investigation-is-expansive/

Mike Huckabee

Tuesday, police officers gathered from far and wide in New York City for the second time in a week, this time to honor Wilbert Mora, the partner of Detective Jason Rivera. Both cops were killed in an ambush by a gunman in Harlem when they answered a domestic disturbance call.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-yorkers-pay-respects-fallen-nypd-officers

Their deaths have been part of a disturbing pattern of rising attacks on police officers across the nation, as leftist DA’s have allowed criminals to take over their cities. Let us all hope and pray that the tragic loss of these officers will galvanize residents to demand action to support police and to recall these “prosecutors” and never allow them within a hundred miles of a seat of power again.

In a very related story, if you like the record-breaking crime waves and murder rates currently destroying American cities due to far-left, criminal-coddling DA’s elected with millions of dollars in PAC funding from socialist billionaire and aspiring Bond villain George Soros, then you’ll be thrilled to hear that Soros just donated another $120,000 to the cause of electing “prosecutors” who are emptying the jails and getting innocent people killed.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/george-soros-120k-pac-prosecutor-races

Moral: Do NOT think that elections for offices like district attorney, or primary elections in one-party areas, are just unimportant local elections that you can safely skip and let other people decide. These days, you need to vote in those local and primary elections as if your life depended on it, because it literally might.

Mike Huckabee

In what could be a sign that the RBC rights movement (the Reality-Based Community) is finally starting to gain some traction, USA Swimming released its “Athlete Inclusion, Competitive Equality and Eligibility Policy,” and it actually contains a tiny concession to biological reality.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/lia-thomas-future-usa-swimming-new-policy-penn-teammates-support

There are still vast clouds of gaseous, CYA verbiage about “gender identity and expression,” but to cut to the chase, eligibility to compete will now include two areas of criteria: evidence that the prior physical development of the athlete as a male doesn’t provide an unfair advantage over female competitors, and evidence that the athlete’s testosterone levels have been sufficiently suppressed for at least 36 months before applying.

This was all prompted by UPenn swimmer “Lia” Thomas, who competed as a male for three years before switching to female, where “she” routinely passes female competitors like a speed boat and is mowing down female records by absurd margins. Take a look at the photo in that story, and you’ll see why.

I’m sure this change will come under furious assault by trans activists, but it's really just a welcome baby step toward returning recognition of the most basic biological facts and doesn’t go nearly far enough. For instance, current testosterone levels are only a small part of the advantage males have in sports because boys are exposed to so much testosterone from the womb onward. The changes during puberty give them even more muscle mass, greater upper body strength and other physical advantages that no testosterone suppressant can reverse.

Trans activists prove this by their own arguments. They go to court for the right to administer puberty-blocking drugs on grounds that if someone wants to “transition” to the other sex, it’s harder after puberty because of the irreversible physical changes. But when trans females want to compete in sports against biological females, suddenly, those physical changes during puberty don’t exist anymore.

This story says that Thomas’ teammates “released a joint statement backing their fellow competitor.” Yes, I’m sure they felt they had to because of the Twitter mob/cancel culture/trans activist pressure. But I’ll bet that in private spaces where it's only the girls – if such spaces still exist anymore – they’re high-fiving over this.

Mike Huckabee

The one silver lining to the pandemic that comes to mind right now --- yes, there is one! --- is that thanks to their kids having to take classes at home, parents got a big bitter taste of what the schools were dishing up. If kids had just been going off to class as usual, parents might never have known about Critical Race Theory, or CRT. And that’s definitely what teachers would have preferred.

“But we don’t teach CRT!” they insisted once the cat was out of the bag. “Why, this is just ‘Ethnic Studies.’ It’s about celebrating different cultures and having pride! Nobody would be against this unless THEY were racist, and we know YOU’RE not racist...right…?”

But it certainly was CRT, and even some who worked inside the education system didn’t know. It wasn’t until the fall of 2020 that high school English teacher Kali Fontanilla found out what it was. She noticed that her students weren’t doing so well in one of their other classes: “ethnic studies.” She didn’t understand why half of her students were failing this particular class.

This was in Salinas, California, and all the students were Hispanic. Fontanilla herself is of Jamaican ancestry.

As a teacher, Fontanilla was able to go online and look at the lesson plans for the class. She was stunned. “This was like extreme left brainwashing of these kids,” she said. “Critical Race Theory all throughout the lessons, from start to finish. The whole thing.”

She could see that the lesson plans even referenced Critical Race Theory by name.

There was “a whole presentation” on CRT, and the kids were even told to analyze the school through that lens. They learned about the “four I’s of oppression”: institutional, internalized, ideological and interpersonal. I’d say the biggest “I” these kids have to oppress them, at least at school, is INDOCTRINATION. That would be filed under “institutional,” I suppose, referring to any institution of “learning” that teaches this garbage.

As you know, Critical Race Theory is derived from Critical Theory, which was designed by Marxists as a basis for tearing down an existing society and culture and remaking it to their liking. According to CRT, all of society was built on racism, so our systems and institutions –- even our laws –- are inherently racist. And each of us, depending primarily on our skin color but also on “intersections” with certain identity groups, is either privileged (the oppressor) or victimized (the oppressed).

It’s a twisted way of looking at our lives. “The kids don’t even want this stuff,” said Fontanilla.

But they get it force-fed in California, because the Democrat-controlled state legislature passed a mandate. Gov. Newsom vetoed the first one, because it was so far out-there that it had come under fire for being strongly anti-capitalist and using jargon like –- get ready –- “cishetereopatriarchy.”

The legislature reworked it and tried again, and Newsom signed that one into law in October of last year. Somebody sure is planning ahead, because the official statewide requirement doesn't go into effect until 2030.

Dan Burns, the superintendent of Salinas Union High School district, denied that the course was “based” on CRT, but called it “one of the frameworks.” That seems like a distinction without a difference, especially when looking at the class syllabus.

The curriculum includes articles such as “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth," by Tara J. Yosso, a professor of education at UCLA specializing in Critical Race Theory.

Students create something called an “intersectional rainbow” with colored strings representing “gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, beliefs, nationality, age, etc.” “Students will compare and contrast their intersectional rainbows with their peers,” the syllabus says, “while framing their discourse within the intersectionality paradigm as laid out by Kimberle Crenshaw.” According to Vanity Fair magazine, Crenshaw is “the mastermind of Critical Race Theory.”

How about a mock trial in which students accuse various historical persons of being complicit in the genocide of Native Californians and “creating a social justice counter-narrative”?

This might be the topper: a graphic depiction of the “privilege hierarchy” with two white girls at the top –- specifically, George W. Bush’s two daughters, Jenna and Barbara. (I am not kidding.)

Fontanilla doesn’t believe her students, most of whom are learning English as a second language, need to “check their privilege.” I would add that since they ARE learning English as a second language, perhaps they should be spending their class time studying THAT, instead of comparing and contrasting their intersectional rainbows.

Fontanilla got involved, obtaining the lesson plans to back up her claims and writing a letter to the school board about the “ethnic studies” class, and it was read aloud at their meeting last June 22. She got an attorney but says that when the school sent the requested class materials, the slides containing the words “Critical Race Theory” had been omitted.

She says that since she spoke up, she’s been harassed and even threatened with violence, mostly by white liberals. One told her to “have fun being the token black friend to racist conservatives your whole life.”

If that doesn't tell you the mentality we're dealing with, try this: When her letter was greeted with cheers by some of the parents at the school board meeting, the board responded by prohibiting anti-CRT comments at its next gathering.

Moving vans and U-Hauls are leaving California every day.

https://reason.com/2022/01/31/critical-race-theory-taught-in-classroom-california/

It’s dawning on more and more parents just what CRT is and how damaging it is to their kids. On March 14, a new documentary called WHOSE CHILDREN ARE THEY? will open in select theaters, exposing CRT as “a thinly-disguised Marxist tool to divide people, create identity groups and bring down America through disunity.”

The film features two of our favorite experts on this subject, Dr. Carol Swain and Dr. Robert Woodson. I can’t wait –- this movie cannot come out soon enough!  Let's support this at the box office.

This film is not some little fringe project that no one will see. The production has some big names attached to it and is being distributed by Fathom Events, a top film distributor in America and internationally as well, owned by AMC Entertainment, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark Holdings.

For more details, quotes from some of the featured experts, and a video of the trailer, this article is a must-read.

https://cnsnews.com/article/national/michael-w-chapman/new-documentary-exposes-critical-race-theory-radical

Mike Huckabee

The UN reports that it has “credible allegations” that despite the Taliban’s promises of a general amnesty, they’ve killed more than 100 former government officials, security force members and Afghans who helped the US (and whom we promised to evacuate) since the Biden Administration allowed the Taliban to retake Afghanistan in August. There are also reports of attacks, intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest, ill treatment and killings of human rights defenders and media workers.

It’s astonishing to think that the US media are so politically biased that they’ve tried to suppress this story by pushing Afghanistan to the back burner, even as Americans and our allies continue to be trapped there and fearing for their lives. Now we know that even includes their colleagues in the media. The bias is strong in these people.

As Deanna Fisher at the Victory Girls blog notes, this is all in addition to previous reports of women being killed for trying to work outside the home, and people selling their organs and their children to survive.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/taliban-killing-off-former-us-afghan-allies-says-un/

Ms Fisher is correct that nobody should claim to be surprised by any of this, although our professional “diplomatic” corps will likely try to pretend they are. As she says, President Biden wanted to claim he’d ended the war to score a cheap political victory. But that “cheap” victory is coming at a very high cost indeed.